Do you wanna build a snowman? Or... a city instead then?

city-build

#1

In another thread we were working on ideas for a building in a city and it got me thinking… why don’t we all collaborate and flesh out this city I got started on? So… here is the city (unnamed so that you can call it as you wish in your campaign) and I have put numbers on it and basic information about each number. It has room to write on the printout if that is something you want to do so you see the numbers along the left, bottom and right side also. Your job… should you wish to take part in this, is to comment on and flesh out each location even more than what is there already. Items being sold. Back stories on the NPC’s and so on. Let’s get this place up and running and usable for all of us. We can import it and the information over here too if you like.

The page is:
HERE


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#2

Excellent initiative. I’ll take a look when I have the time.


#3

this is great, ill dig right in

Edit*
For making NPCs I’ve used the formula from Runesmith’s youtube video

and this list of flaws from this website


#4

Grand Master Owens

Leader of the City Watch

Weakness: Arrogant – Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance. Inclined to social exclusiveness, rebuffs the advances of people considered inferior. Snobbish.

Need: To grow a heart, he treats the people he is sworn to protect like cattle.

Desire: To protect the people from all threats, foriegn and domestic in his city. He is the best and will not have his image tarnished. He punishes hard and swift.

Enemy: A specific criminal he hasn’t been able to catch yet. Each time the criminal strikes again makes Owens look bad.

Secret: Owens secretly tries to cover up all instances of the criminal he is hunting from going public. At times he will even frame drunks and other lowlives instead making a public scene of him catching them assuring the public the matter has been dealt with and hang the framed men in the morning.

Rumor: Owens used to work in the imperial city’s guard and got in trouble for some unknown reason causing him to relocate to here.

Passion: Every morning Owens jogs around the keep to stay in shape, at 6AM he duels to the death with at least 1 person with comedic ease and usually in one blow. Owens has made it public knowledge that anyone can fight him if they make an appointment with his secretary ahead of time. These duels are legal, to the death, no guns, bows, or magic allowed. Owens has made many disgruntled enemies over the years who travel far and never runs out of people to duel each morning. Need to speak to the Grand Master? I’m sorry he is a very busy man, perhaps if you go to the courtyard in the morning at 6AM you can speak with him while he duels.

Jazel

Money Lender

Weakness: Meddlesome – Intrusive in a meddling or offensive manner, given to meddling; interfering.

Need: Wealth, he has dozens of investment properties he needs to go up in value before he can begin to see a profit. He has been losing money for years.

Desire: To lend money to homeowners outside the keep in exchange for the title to their land. He lets the people he lends money to continue to stay and live in their homes at an affordable rent making the low income residence see him as a savior. Got a problem? Go see Jazel.

Enemy: Thieves who are targeting his properties and lowering their values. He has complained to Grand Master Owens for more guards for the homes outside the keep’s walls but Owens says his job is to protect the keep not the rats that huddle outside the door.

Secret: Jazel is paying a highly skilled criminal to target homes inside the keep to provoke Grand Master Owens to increase more guards.

Secret: Jazel set up lord Blackthorn with a peasant’s daughter in hopes he will focus more on the peasant’s needs and maybe build another wall around the girl’s family property (Jazel owns the deed)

Passion: investing, he knows that the keep is growing at an alarming rate economically and is trying to buy as much land around it as possible.

**These characters was heavily inspired from the Sins of Empire book Series


#5

Great work! I have added all that to the “Guards barracks” at number 24 on the Trello page. Really nice effort


#6

Surprised more people aren’t adding to this. All these GMs and not a single NPC to share.

Heres another, she could fill any role in town fitting to a young lady @ScottyRoberts. A waitress, stable hand, shop clerk.


Rachel Bevins

Pregnant Teen

Weakness: She is young, naive, and gullible

Need: Her baby daddy to get a new job and help support her and the baby. The father is a bard who isn’t a good singer but Rachel thinks he has the voice of an angel.

Desire: To show everyone she is capable of raising the child, everyone treats her like she is too young and going to screw up the kid’s life.

Enemy: Her parents who disowned her after she got pregnant, because they don’t approve of the father.

Secret: She can sing very well, but is too embarrassed to sing in front of anyone but her baby daddy.

Passion: Math, she can calculate large equations all in her head. (which is ironic considering how much of an air head she appears to be.)


Followup challenge: Who is this baby daddy bard no one seems to like? Who are Rachel’s parents who have disowned her and what do they do?


#7

I know right? Where’s all the creators? We all will benefit from this once done. We will have our very own City of Greyhawk albeit much smaller. lol.

Great work on this man. I will figure out which NPC to add this to later on once I re-read my characters done so far… see who would be the best fit to be mom or dad to her.


#8

Varik Sen Pelätin- Lives across from #40

Human Scarecrow and unofficial road guard.

Weakness: easily distracted- after years of walking fields more or less alone he has become prone to day dreams and finds small changes in his day to day life endlessly fascinating. Mean spirited kids have taken to etching long winding lines in the dirt near the fields he watches over in the hopes that he finds one and spends the rest of his day following it.

Need Friends. Though he is often invited over to supper by Bernard Amoh or found chatting with travelers interested in his unique job he is in need of actual friends.

Desire To protect the crops from crows and thieves

Enemy He has inadvertently stopped several smuggling operations that have tried to use the fields as a passage route. The big boss is not happy.

Secret He admires some of the crows for their ingenuity and persistence and is actually quite fond of some of them.

Rumor He is actually a scarecrow brought to life by an evil wizard (he’s not) and can use magic to turn the crops against you (he can’t)

Passion To keep things safe. He was hired to walk the fields when the actual scarecrows failed to do their job and so he intends to do this task of keeping pests away to the best of his abilities. Since many of the fields he walks are close to a main road leading into town he has also taken to walking a mile or so at dawn as he goes to work and at dusk when he returns to make sure the travelers make the last leg of their journey safe. He is quite skilled with the war scythe he uses as a walking stick and is often underestimated.


Advice Wanted: Running City Adventures
So my Players might become Merchants. What do I do?
#9

Nice entry @Looten

A scarecrow guard is just great and very creative.

Looking forward to seeing more entries from the community!


#10

Thanks! I love having full,living towns with all sorts of fun folks to interact with. I get bored with the “here’s town X with a black smith, inn,magic shop and one sage old man who hands out quests”. I want more towns where running through a back yard from the guards leads to so much more depending on who’s yard it is. Too many fun adventures are missed out on because small towns aren’t delved into enough. I’d love to run a whole campaign someday built around sticking in/near a small town so I’m hoping this post gets lots of good responses and interwoven stories.


#11

Couldn’t agree more @Looten,

This is a major feature that separates tabletops from video games, the true living world where the npcs have more to say than their one static line.


#12

I have added this as a separate locale at the very bottom of the list on Trello. Great work man. Super creative


#13

I tend to run my games in this way. I create the town and then have dozens of plot hooks emanating from it like a wagons wheel. The town is the hub and the spokes are the hooks. They all connect in some way usually so that would be the outer ring of the wheel metaphorically. Our current game is a year in now with new players who have never played before and they are loving it. We are still in the first town but in our next session they will be leaving it. I have a few plot hooks in the wilderness to break up the scenery and add some flavor but it will inevitably bring them to this town/city next and I intend to run this location for over a year as well. Many of the plot hooks take them out of town for awhile but there is always bait to bring them back. In our current town they ended up owning a tavern and had a hidden storage unit under it so they needed a place to come back to often to put their winnings and so on. The last game had the big villain showdown finally happen and as I planned (for story reasons) they could not win and the town was decimated and in turn they lost almost all their loot. Now they who were once hero’s of the town are now the cause of it’s demise so they will not be welcomed by the survivors. Plus, they lost all their stuff and want vengeance so I have them following the carrot. I have always found cities/towns a great place for GM’s. It’s the “you all meet in a tavern” kind of thing but rather than tavern… “you all meet in a city” instead. :slight_smile:


#14

Mr. Rigor- Lives at 54

Necromancer Mortician

Weakness Can’t read the room. Cheery and optimistic to a fault he can be initially off-putting to the grieving who don’t quite understand his views on death. He also doesn’t understand the negative social stigmas around Necromancers

Need an assistant who is better at people skills

Desire To continue his use of Necromancy to assist those who are grieving and for it to become more acceptable.

Enemy Bernard Amoh is highly against his tampering with the dead and sees it as ungodly. Other Necromancers think he is giving them a bad name and making light of their powers.

Secret He started off after trying to revive his murdered family which he accidentally resurrected as a fused abomination which attacked his home town resulting in 13 deaths.

Rumor: He is going to raise an undead army to take over the town

Passion: His whole life revolves around the dead. He uses his powers to give grieving families get one last chance to be with their loved ones. He has the dead dress themselves, dig the hole, give hugs to family members,put themselves in the casket and give one last wave goodbye; all with the goal of making the process easier for everyone. He just wants to make their time of sorrow as nice of an experience as he can.


#15

Taven - Lives behind 25 (mostly)

Street Rat

Weakness Stubborn. Refuses to get off the streets despite having plenty of applicable skills to get a job.

Need a bit of coin, a bite to eat, and definitely a bath.

Desire Taven alway has his own far-fetched, get-rich-quick scheme. If you thought Pyramid schemes were great, just wait until you hear about Taven’s Octahedral scheme. Unfortunately, Taven has no follow through.

Enemy Murty Macadool, Taven’s Mom, is always after him in some form of another. She lives on the other side of town, by 41. It’s a regular occurrence for Taven to suddenly duck for cover if Murty walks by.

Secret : Overtime, Taven has tunneled/built out a small network of hidden tunnels, passages, and pathways to quickly get around town. He got the idea from watching the stray cats around town.

Rumor : There is a saying around town, “If something goes wrong, it was probably Taven’s fault.” This is usually not the case, but he’s an easy target to blame.

Passion : Taven loves the city strays. He provides milk, food, and shelter for all the stray cats he meets. He knows each one by name, can describe their personality, and even knows where you might find any one based on the time of day. He just LOVES cats.


#16

I really appreciate that, thank you


#17

And you back. :slight_smile:
I have added these also


#18

That’s a really interesting way to run it, I like that a lot!


#19

@Looten Nice necromancer. An interesting take to have grieving family members get to say goodbye. I love how he makes them dress themselves and also dig their own graves lol.

@KaneDriscol thanks for contributing!
The street rat Taven is a great addition to the growing town. Seems like a great npc that accidentally stumbles into something BIG and shows the PCs…for a price.


#20

Thank you! I figured its a fun twist, sort of like if Ned Flanders was a Necromancer. Plus if he makes them do all the hard work, its less work for him.